The Riker fic is not cooperating. It's also keeps getting more and more angsty, to the point where, if I finish it, I think the summary is going to be:

The saying, “Life is just one damn thing after another,” is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.

Ar|si is pronounced with a click consonant similar to a "tsk". My puny human brain can't quite manage to come up with non-human phonemes for alien names, but I'm trying to get out of using only English phonemes.

Content note for a discussion of sexual assault. (Everything happens off screen and the discussion isn't graphic.)

Concrit welcome.

Ar|si walked in a few minutes later, and ordered hot water with vanilla extract and a splash of pickle juice. The woman at the counter was clearly not used to aliens, because she made him repeat the order twice before going to make his drink. Riker watched, ready to intervene if she became rude, but she was cordial throughout, just confused.

When Ar|si finally had his drink, he sat down across from Riker, and immediately lapsed into silence while slowly drinking his concoction. Riker waited what seemed like a reasonable amount of time for the other man to open up before saying, "It's not unusual for people to need support after an encounter with the Borg, especially their first encounter."

"This isn't about the Borg," Ar|si said, his voice tight.

"Oh."

"I like Earth," Ar|si said. "You don't have to waste time arguing about every little thing. I never cared for that. I know it's polite, but sometimes you just want to skip the argument and move on. Maybe that makes me a bad person, I don't know."

"I don't think that makes you a bad person," Riker said.

"A bad Tellarite, I mean."

"In my opinion, for whatever it's worth, it doesn't make you that either."

Ar|si opened his mouth and drew a breath as if he was about to speak, and then he seemed to deflate. He made a growling noise that Riker knew was just the Tellarite equivalent of a cleared throat, but a few people glanced over at them with concern on their faces. Anchorage wasn't the most cosmopolitan city on the planet.

"I messed up and I need help." The words came out fast, like they were being forced out before he could change his mind.

"Okay," said Riker, ignoring his own dismay at the realization that this was not going to be a simple ten minute conversation after all. "Tell me what happened."

Ar|si sucked air in through his teeth. "I was playing dabo on Inferna, and I was doing well, and then I wasn't doing so well."

Riker nodded. That was usually how playing dabo went, especially if the table wasn't fair, and most weren't.

"I figured I would go triple down, try to get it all back, but...they said I didn't have enough. There was a woman there, and she said I could bet, um..." He took a drink. "She said I could bet myself."

"Yourself?" Riker rubbed at his beard with the back of his hand. "What did she mean by that?"

"To be honest, I didn't ask. I figured...I was sure my luck was about to turn."

Riker managed not to roll his eyes. He prided himself on being a gambler who never gave in to superstition. Luck wasn't a real thing that ebbed and flowed. It was all statistics, and in Dabo, the statistics were against you.

Of course, he had managed to win a triple down in Quark's once, but that was mainly because Riker had been shamelessly flirting with the Dabo girl all night, and toward the end of the evening, she'd turned to him and whispered, "I have another job lined up, and you're cute. Put it all on a triple down." Not that Riker was ever going to tell anyone that. He had a reputation to maintain.

"So you bet...yourself?"

Ar|si tapped the back of his hand with two fingers, a Tellarite nod.

"And I'm assuming you lost?"

Another tap.

"So what did she want?"

Ar|si was staring at the table. "Pictures," he said, so softly that Riker almost didn't hear him.

"Pictures," Riker repeated. He leaned close. "What sort of pictures?"

"Naked pictures."

Riker let out a slow breath, and bit back a curse.

"They, the woman and her, I guess they were her friends, wouldn't let me leave until I took my clothes off and let them take the pictures."

He didn't bother to bite back the curse that time, and said something about said woman and her friends, and their presumed habit of copulating with their maternal parents. Ar|si's lips pulled back and he bared his teeth. A smile, of a sort.